OMG Ivy League Students are Cutters Too

A recent study found that 17 percent of kids at two Ivy League schools--Cornell and Princeton--had at sometime practice some sort of self-abuse...you know, CUTTING.

People are astounded that kids at these prestigious universities would be prone to such disturbed behavior. I am astounded that people would be at all surprised. To me, it makes perfect sense.

Cutting is such a bourgeois pastime if you think about it critically. I believe we can all agree that anyone who is seriously hurting themselves deserves immediate help, but the more you can afford to hurt yourself, the more inclined you are to use it as a form of stress relief. If you're poor or working two jobs or you don't have health insurance, you might be more in touch with the feeling of pain thus making the idea of causing yourself a big heaping pile of it less appealing.

These kids at Ivy League schools have probably had to spend the majority of their histories pleasing other people. They are overachievers. The only place they can have privacy and not have to go above and beyond is their own body. In a lot of cases, their physical beings are the only things they feel they have control over, so they hurt themselves when they don't know where else to turn. It's the same reason you see so many rich girls with eating disorders.

These confused kids need help just like anyone else with this problem. It's a little disconcerting, because you would hope they'd be smart enough to ask for it, but the SAT measures your ability to multiply fractions, not your mental health. However, I wouldn't really worry about anyone who cuts themselves and talks about it on a survey or chats about it online. They want people to know they have a problem. I'm really worried about all the kids who don't talk about it with anyone...they are the ones who really need help.